to
Athens. Such being the happy state of affairs not only in Europe but as
regards the states in Asia also, thanks to the friendly attitude of
the king to his fellow-citizens, he sailed into Byzantium and sold the
tithe-duty levied on vessels arriving from the Euxine. By another stroke
he converted the oligarchy of Byzantium into a democracy. The result of
this was that the Byzantine demos (28) were no longer sorry to see as
vast a concourse of Athenians in their city as possible. Having so done,
and having further won the friendship of the men of Calchedon, he set
sail south of the Hellespont. Arrived at Lesbos, he found all the cities
devoted to Lacedaemon with the exception of Mytilene. He was therefore
loth to attack any of the former until he had organised a force within
the latter. This force consisted of four hundred hoplites, furnished
from his own vessels, and a corps of exiles from the different
cities who had sought shelter in Mytilene; to which he added a stout
contingent, the pick of the Mytileneian citizens themselves. He stirred
the ardour of the several contingents by suitable appeals: representing
to the men of Mytilene that by their capture of the cities they would at
once become the chiefs and patrons of Lesbos; to the exiles he made it
appear that if they would but unite to attack each several city in turn,
they might all reckon on their particular restoration; while he needed
only to remind his own warriors that the acquisition of Lesbos meant not
only the attachment of a friendly city, but the discovery of a mine
of wealth. The exhortations ended and the contingents organised, he
advanced against Methymna.

(25) Grote, "H. G." ix. 507.

(26) Al. Amedocus.

(27) For Seuthes, see above, "Hell." III. ii. 2, if the same.

(28) For the varying fortunes of the democrats at Byzantium in 408
B.C. and 405 B.C., see above, ("Hell." I. iii. 18; II. ii. 2); for
the present moment, 390-389 B.C., see Demosth. "c. Lept." 475; for
the admission of Byzantium into the new naval confederacy in 378
B.C., see Hicks, 68; Kohler, "C. I. A." ii. 19; and for B.C. 363,
Isocr. "Phil." 53; Diod. xv. 79; and for its commercial
prosperity, Polyb. iv. 38-47.

Therimachus, who chanced to be the Lacedaemonian governor at the time,
on hearing of the meditated attack of Thrasybulus, had taken a body
of marines from his vessels, and, aided by the citizens of Methymna
themselves, along with all the My